Impact of English Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) on desired proficiency of 8th grade students

Within the context of lockdown and pandemic situation, by taking all these conditions in attention, government of Punjab introduced compact and shortened curriculum named as Accelerated learning program for 8th grade students. The accelerated syllabi are usually introduced and implemented to fulfill short term objectives. The current study aimed at investigating how efficient and effective this ALP can be in achieving estimated language proficiency of students. Furthermore, there is some need to get awareness to teachers’ preference and their ALP teaching practices meeting the desired aims. The syllabus has been introduced to minimize the Covid-19-driven learning loss and expedite the teaching and learning procedures to damage control and maximize learning outputs. Therefore, current study was designed as experimental so that researchers can check the impact of ALP on students’ achievements. Moreover, the effect of the independent variable ALP course was checked upon the English proficiency of the learners which is termed as a dependent variable. The 8th grade students at government schools of Bahawalpur district were taken as the population of the study out of which only 60 students were selected by using a random sampling technique and 80 teachers were also selected by using a purposive sampling technique. The findings of the study indicate that there is little or no impact on students’ learning outcomes by the use of ALP course for teaching English language. It is also found that teachers face difficulty while teaching through ALP because it is too compact and it did not include all the language components and skills. In order to obtain the maximum output from ALP, it is suggested to devise comprehensive lesson planning and proper teaching strategies with revised and modified pattern of learning outcomes.

“The accident of the accent”: satiric reflections of contemporary Nigeria in Wole Soyinka’s Alapata Apata

The accident of the accent is the hilarious and artistic device Wole Soyinka employs to portray the societal failings and ways to ameliorate them in Alapata Apata as a writer of national consciousness and global realities. Previous critical studies on this text have focused on the avalanche of satirical elements and their societal manifests in the play with little or no consideration for the accentual mistake (the accident of the accent) and its satirical implications. This is the critical lacuna that this study attempts to fill. The primary text shall be Wole Soyinka’s Alapata Apata which will be subjected to critical textual analysis. Inspirations are drawn from Gerard Genette’s model of Narratology as the theoretical framework to allow for the investigation of the intrinsic visual and auditory images in the text and to undergird the analysis of the findings. It is discovered that there are three prominent strands of accentual representations and their corresponding interpretations of Alapata Apata: Alapata Apata (the butcher on the rock), Alapata Apata (rock spliter) and Alapata Apata (the ruler of the rock domain). This paper concludes that Soyinka’s artistic talent in the play lies largely in the presentation of Yoruba, his mother tongue accent marks to sift out the socio- political faults in his society and by extension in the entire nation of the world.

A contrastive study on thanking in Arabic dialects and English

Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (CCP) is a field of study that focuses on the interaction of people from various cultures. It is to clarify cultural distinctions between languages that acquire meaning through context and sociocultural embedding, resulting in a pragmatic communication failure. This study determines whether the Arabic language, because of dialectical variation, contains more thanking methods than English. Additionally, it aims to investigate the face-threatening strategies used by Arabs and native English speakers. Besides, it aims to determine whether contextual variables affect thanking expressions. The data collection instrument was an open-ended questionnaire in two versions Arabic and English. The results were then analyzed quantitatively using SPSS software version 26.0, following Cheng's classification of thanking. The findings indicate that dialectical diversity is not associated with an increase in thanking strategies that are more prevalent in English. Additionally, religion affects the Arabs speaking, their manner of thanking does not exclude religious expressions, which are their preferred method of expressing their politeness and gratitude. In terms of face-threatening strategies, both native Arabic and English speakers preferred negative politeness to positive politeness, which focuses on minimizing the FTA's particular imposition. Concerning contextual variables such as familiarity and social status, both affect how the thanking speech act is performed. It will be worthwhile to investigate thanking in Arabic and English with a specific factor such as social distance. Additionally, it is beneficial to examine thanking in Arabic dialects regarding civilization's cultural influence and the dialect's proximity to standard Arabic.

The potency of pragmatic theoretical frameworks in the analysis of female literary writings in northern Nigeria

The paper examines the potency of pragmatic theories in the analysis of female writings in northern Nigeria. As a literary genre, poetry is unique for deploying enchanting language in the communication of the poet’s thematic preoccupations. In using language to communicate themes or subject matter, the poet is engaged in two basic tasks: selecting appropriate words and skillfully patterning such words with others in stretches. From classical to contemporary times, pragmatic theories are essentially theoretical frameworks for the interpretation of textual meanings – meanings which reveal language use as the performance of actions. In the analysis of Sheefah Zarma’s poem (“Love”), this paper hinges on two theoretical underpinnings: Adegbija’s pragmatic theory and the Pragma-crafting Theory. The significance of this study is worthy of scholarly attention; to the best of our knowledge, most studies on the pragmatic investigation of language use in literary writings focus on prose and drama because these two genres of literature are more action-revealing in terms of the dynamics of human interaction which is the core of pragmatics. It is therefore particularly significant that this study demonstrates phenomenally that even poetry can capture fascinating action-like dimensions of language use to disabuse the minds of readers who do not see poetry as speech-acts-revealing. Interestingly, this study examines the work of a young female poet from northern Nigeria, rather than that of a celebrated writer from the same region – Zeinab Alkali. This study concludes that pragmatic theories are integrative and capture the contextual underpinnings of language use.

Appraising Katherine Mansfield’s Father Figures in “The Little Girl”: A Transitivity Analysis

This article explores the patterns of father figures, the father -child relationships and power imbalance depicted in Katherine Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, using one tool of analysis from Systemic Functional Grammar, which is Transitivity. Examined are the ways Mansfield, as a Modernist and feminist writer, thematizes and engages herself to the theme of the fathering model and the father - child relationships typical of her time in her story. The study concentrates on The Little Girl, by Mansfield, which contains father figures and children as one of the central issues. The study concludes that there is a remote father syndrome in Mansfield's “The Little Girl”, and that the fathering style and practice of the Old Father type makes the impossibility of healthy father-child relationships, and that the Old Father's conventional fatherhood creates a power imbalance between males and females, and finally there is an aspiration for the New type of father in the child’s life.

Semantic, Pragmatic and Cultural Equivalence in the Source Text and Target Text of the Selected Poetry of Amjad Islam Amjad

Present study aims to find semantic, pragmatics and cultural equivalence in the source text and the translated text of the selected poetry of Amjad Islam Amjad. The poem that has been selected is “kabhi kabhi habs bhari ratoon main” with English translated version of Michael Burch along under the title ‘Every once in a while’. The research design adopted for this study was exploratory and case-based design comprised upon the poetry of Amjad Islam Amjad. One poem in Source language (Urdu) and its translated version (English) was taken through critical case sampling method. The study attempted to explore the frequency and extent of linguistic items equally used in both texts and what is the amount of poignancy and essence in them. The study concludes that significant traces of semantic, pragmatic and cultural transplantation has been found in the source text and translated text of the sample drawn for the analysis.

Interaction in Online Learning Environment during Covid -19: Factors behind Lack of Interaction and Ideas for Promoting it

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the learning process shifted from face- to- face learning into online learning as schools and universities closed almost all over the word. With the shift from face to face into online learning, the learning process effected negatively specially students’ interaction. In the online learning process, students tend to avoid interacting for many different reasons the study discussed. In light of this shift, by exploring the experiences and perceptions of the English language students at Hebron University, Palestine, this descriptive survey research aimed to investigate the reasons behind students’ lack of interaction during their online class sessions. It also tries to provide some useful ideas and suggestion that instructors may use in order to increase their students' interaction and participation with relevance to some other studies. The researchers employed a mono method quantitative research approach. A survey-questionnaire was posted online through Google forms to all English language major students Hebron University. The findings reported some reasons behind lack of interaction and some suggestions to promote interaction based on the participants’ perceptions. The study provides instructors and educational decision makers with pedagogical insights that may better shape the learning/teaching process in the online environment.

Role of Women and Environment in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head

Women and environment play significant role in Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head (2009). Women empowerment relates to giving women more power over their own life and the circumstances they are facing with. Empowering women is to empower them to break the traditional picture of perfect womanhood where patriarchy dominates and women get all the bad things in their life. Women through their self-assertion contribute greatly towards women empowerment. It is this self-assertion of women that forms the core of Temsula Ao’s collection of short stories entitled Laburnum for My Head, and this paper. Writers of literature has always been lured and urged by their physical and biological environment to manifest the beauties of nature in their creative endeavour. Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head showcases the correlation between literature and the physical and biological aspects of nature. This paper relates Ao’s stance on women and environment in Laburnum for My Head by placing the stories in such diverse setting as ecology, environment, non-human animal, violence, bloodshed, marriage, motherhood, animal rights etc.

The Blue Eyes vs Untrue Ideas: A Postcolonial Critique of Pecola’s Persistence to Fit in the White American Society in The Bluest Eye

Set in Ohio, the north side of America, the tone in The Bluest Eye features post-colonial treatment to its central character, Pecola Breedlove. This paper discusses how she experiences a sense of being completely ruined after she is raped by her father, and her quest for the blue eyes meets merely untrue ideas. The plot, as described in the paper, provides a post-colonial background of two racial conflicts regarding the blackness, and the white beauty in America. This paper critically draws on the idea of physical whiteness as being the only American standard of beauty while Pecola’s physical ugliness draws on how black people get seriously marginalized for their blackness of their own bodies. The storyline progresses to show how Pecola‟s tragedy becomes the central theme regarding the issue of seeing, and of being seen. The paper presents a binary opposite through the portrayal of black Pecola on one side, and Mary Janes, or Shirley Temple on the other. Consequently, the conflicts meet hardly any positive solution. Pecola receives exactly the behavior that the black slaves were used to receive from the whites in the past. From the historical perspective, The United States experienced inequality between the whites, and the blacks at that time when Morrison wrote this novel. She saw that the black race got segregated from the whites in the case of superiority. Racial tension also influenced the children in the schools, where the black ones were ridiculed there. However, the acceptance of the fair skin, actually, tormented black people both psychologically, and left a scar on them like Pecola Breedlove experiences.

Exile and Expatriation in Jabra’s (1974) “In the Deserts of Exile” and Wright’s (1951) “I Choose Exile”

This study compares and stylistically analyzes the theme of exile in Jabra’s (1974) “In the Deserts of Exile” and Wright’s (1951) “I Choose Exile”. It aims to show the different representations of exile in a Palestinian and an American work through discussing four sub-themes present in both works. Among these are the motives of exile and the meaning of different places and colors that are perceived differently in accordance with each writer's setting; all these factors make exile involuntary for Jabra but voluntary for Wright. The study, also, employs Edward Said’s contrapuntal, postcolonial, and space and place theories.